entirely devoted to her, and with every wish gratified, yet seems always careworn and dissatisfied. Her servants worry her very life out; she misses the homely household duties to which she has been accustomed; and her conscience stumbles at little things, and overlooks greater ones. It is very interesting, I think, to study different homes, as well as the different characters that form them. Amelia's little girls are quiet, good children, to whom their father writes what Mr. Underhill and Martha pronounce "beautiful" letters, wherein he always styles himself their "broken-hearted but devoted father." "Devotion," to my mind, involves self-sacrifice, and I cannot reconcile its use, in this case, with the life of ease he leads, while all the care of his children is thrown upon others. But some people, by means of a few such phrases, not only impose upon themselves but upon their friends, and pass for persons of great sensibility. As I have been confined to the house nearly the whole winter, I have had to derive my spiritual support from books, and as mother gradually recovered, she enjoyed Leighton with me, as I knew she would. Dr. Cabot comes to see us very often, but, I do not now find it possible to get the instruction from him I used to do. I see that the Christian life must be individual, as the natural character is-and that I cannot be exactly like Dr. Cabot, or exactly like Mrs. Campbell, or exactly like mother, though they all three stimulate and are an inspiration to me. But I see, too, that the great points of similarity in Christ's disciples have always been the same. This is the testimony of all the good books, sermons, hymns, and, memoirs I read-that God's ways are infinitely perfect; that we are to love Him for what He is, and therefore equally as much when He afflicts as when He prospers us; that there is no real happiness but in doing and suffering His will, and that this life is but a scene of probation through which we pass to the real life above. Chapter 21 XXI. MAY 30. ERNEST asked me to go with him to see one of his patients, as he often does when there is a lull in the tempest at home. We both feel that as we have so little money of our own to give away, it is a privilege to give what services and what cheering words we can. As I took it for granted that we were going to see some poor old woman, I put up several little packages of tea and sugar, with which Susan Green always keeps me supplied, and added a bottle of my own raspberry vinegar, which never comes amiss, I find, to old people. Ernest drove to the door of an aristocratic-looking house, and helped me to alight in his usual silence. "It is probably one of the servants we are going to visit," I thought, within myself; "but I am surprised at his bringing me. The family may not approve it."